


You’re a stranger I know well

by VerboseWordsmith



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Developing Friendships, Ed-level cursing, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6889012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VerboseWordsmith/pseuds/VerboseWordsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My god Ed, did you manage to find your long lost sister?"</p><p>Ed raised an eyebrow, holy fuck, Russell actually came to lunch. Sheska was next to him; she must have found him in the library.</p><p>"Russell, this is Lan Fan, she's cooler than you'll ever be."</p>
            </blockquote>





	You’re a stranger I know well

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Xyriath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xyriath/gifts).



> Written for [Xyriath's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Xyriath) birthday. She saw the rough draft on her actual birthday, hopefully the final draft was worth the wait. [themadlurker](http://archiveofourown.org/users/themadlurker) provided invaluable input and a lot of hand-holding. Title blatantly stolen from The Academy Is... "The Test"

Mondays weren't the problem; Ed had no problems with the concept of Mondays, the work/school week had to start somewhere and if it wasn't Monday, it'd be Tuesday or Friday or whatever, so the actual day itself wasn't the problem. _Mornings_ were the problem.

Specifically, any time before about 11am (assuming he hadn't pulled another all-nighter).

Ed was a night owl and a teenager, which was the worst combination when it came to early morning alarms and having to Do Stuff before late morning (or even early afternoon, sometimes). Mornings, and even more precisely _school mornings_ , were the worst, maybe even cruel and unusual punishment level of worst that had to be illegal. Science totally had his back here—

"Mom, there are studies about teenagers and sleep, we're literally wired to stay up later and sleep in, this whole class starting before 8am is horrible for our health, it's negatively impacting my academic performance," Ed whined to his mom. She just rolled her eyes at him and handed him his travel mug.

"And yet, you can use multi-syllable words before you've had coffee and you're acing all of your classes," Trisha said dryly. "You're fine, now get your butt in gear and eat something besides pop tarts." She shooed Ed towards the table where there was a bowl of fruit and a carton of almond milk already out. Ed glanced at the clock, they had about ten minutes until he needed to leave.

"ALPHONSE!" Trisha yelled in the general direction of the bedrooms. "GET UP!"

Ed had enough time for a bowl of cereal and maybe a banana or something so Mom didn't lecture him again; Al was going to be another five minutes at least before he stumbled into the kitchen in search of coffee and something to eat while Ed drove them. Maybe he'd take pity on Al and pour him some coffee to go.

*

Ed got them to school more or less on time. On time enough that Ed's homeroom teacher didn't mark him late, at least. Ed pretty much slept through his first block and a half of classes, it wasn't like high school calculus (even AP or IB or whatever supposedly "advanced" calculus they were doing) was hard and Ed couldn't actually think of a bigger waste of his time than his English class. He'd woken up enough half way through to catch about five minutes worth of his teacher's rambling about The Scarlet Letter and noted that even the class' resident bookworm and future terrifyingly absented-minded literature professor, Sheska, wasn't paying attention. It looked like she was reading something half-hidden in her binder and Ed was willing to bet it was _actually_ interesting. Ed didn't really do fiction, but Sheska had good taste in books. He wished she was the one choosing their books. Ed looked up at the clock, he had about 45 minutes left of purgatory; plenty of time for him to do his chemistry homework.

Chemistry was another class Ed could probably sleep through and ace; like his calculus class and probably the physics class he was going to take next semester (unless he was lucky and got Mrs. Curtis), it wasn't exactly a challenge. But Ed lived in hope that their teacher might talk about something interesting or they'd have a lab day. Lab days were fun; the lab work itself was tedious, but Ed got through it quickly and wrote the fastest and most detailed lab reports in his class, so he usually had time to play with chemicals and show off a little. Ed liked to remind people that he was a better scientist than them and honestly, who didn't like a few minor explosions or brightly colored flames in glass containers? The mostly harmless, _fun_ stuff he got to do in the high school lab didn't make up for the rest of it, but it was a better trade than most of his classes.

Ed's chem homework was still boring and pointless though, which is why he only did it on days like today when he had time to kill in English. It drove his teacher nuts, but Mr. Chandler couldn't do much about it; tests and lab reports counted for way more of the class' grade and Ed always aced those. Ed was also willing to do the extra credit work and make up assignments when his average slipped too low; unless Mr. Chandler wanted to screw his struggling students over, there wasn't anything he could do about Ed's work ethic. Ed actually had two more equations to balance when the bell rang; he figured he had enough time to finish them before he had to turn his homework in and if he didn't? It wasn't like it _mattered_.

Ed meandered towards his usual table; there were an even number of students in his class, but the way the room was laid out, Ed got a table to himself, which was fine by him. Today, however, Ed's table already had someone sitting at it. She had dark hair pulled up into a bun and wore a black hoodie; Ed was kind of impressed with her eyeliner. Walking around the table so he could get to the open seat (which was his usual seat, at least) Ed was also kind of impressed by her boots. The heels were probably uncomfortable after awhile, but A+ aesthetics; they looked like the beautiful lovechild of Victorian boots and something from an RPG with how tall they were and how they laced up the back.

Okay, he was a lot impressed by her boots. Would it be weird to ask her where she got them? Probably if he didn't say hi first.

Ed ignored his teacher (and the last bit of his homework) in favor of surreptitiously studying his new table mate. She had very neat handwriting and seemed to favor dark blues and reds with her school supplies. She either had crap taste in nail polish, no skill in applying it, did too much with her hands to keep it from chipping like crazy, or, like Winry, it was all of the above. He wondered why she was joining the class mid-year; she must have just moved, they wouldn't just let people switch from one chemistry class into another (Ed had managed to convince Al to do that back in October and then take bio next year, but the school wouldn't let them, something to do with expectations or workload or something equally dumb).

Apparently he wasn't as stealthy as he thought, because now she was looking at him expectantly.

"What?" Ed said.

"We're supposed to partner up to solve the problems on this handout," she told him, waving a paper. "Weren't you paying attention?"

"Nope," Ed said, reaching for the paper. He looked it over; boring. "You're more interesting than this stuff."

"I have a boyfriend," she said primly.

"Cool, me too, " Ed said. "When's this due? It won't take me long."

"End of class, and it'll take even less time if we each do half."

In theory, she was right. Assuming she was any good at math. Or chemistry. Ed wasn't going to hold his breath for that, but maybe she'd covered this at her old school and actually knew what to do. "Did you do this unit already?"

"I don't think so," she said, taking the paper back and looking it over again. "But I also skipped half of my chem classes because they're boring. This is just...what, balancing chemical equations? It's not like it's hard."

"I'll take the top half, you take the bottom?" Ed suggested and she shrugged, then tore the paper in half.

Ed finished within half an hour; he even took the time to double check his work. He looked over at his current partner and was surprised to see that she was almost done, it looked like she just had another equation left. Awesome, Ed was going to try and keep her because if she was this good with everything else on the syllabus, she probably wouldn't be the worst lab partner in the world.

"How much time do we have to kill?" she asked him once she'd finished.

Ed craned his neck to find the clock; it was almost noon; "We have like half an hour 'til lunch."

" _Good_ ," she said, "I'm starving, your class schedule is brutal."

"What was your old one like?"

"Normal, 45-minute classes," she said. "And I could grab a snack in a couple of them. This is ridiculous."

"How did you even _learn_ anything?" Ed asked, horrified. It wasn't like he learned a lot in most of his classes, perils of being a genius and all (and having a mother who refused to let him go to college early) but at least they had time to cover stuff and like, have a class discussions or whatever. Sometimes those were pretty good, and Ed knew Al liked them (and that Paninya and Winry appreciated the hour and a half long blocks in their respective graphic design and metal working classes).

"Well, I never had to sit around for like half an hour and do nothing in them," she said sharply and Ed had to agree, that was a good point. "I'm Lan Fan, by the way. I just transferred from Sacred Heart, but you seemed to know that already."

"Ed," he replied. "And it's obvious 'cause this is one of the few full year classes we've got and people can't switch into those unless they were taking it at another school. Didn't know it was Sacred Heart, though."

"Oh," she said. "That makes sense, I guess. My grandfather had to fight pretty hard to get me into this class, I didn't realize why. You guys have a _weird_ schedule."

"Depends on what you're used to, I guess," Ed said with a shrug.

"Any survival tips? Do I just need to start eating an enormous breakfast every day now?"

"You could," Ed said with a grin. "Might not be a bad idea, actually. But most of the teachers get it, especially if they know you've got a late lunch, so it shouldn't be much of a problem if you want to eat something second block. Just don't bring anything messy or loud to eat and you should be fine. And don't eat the cafeteria food, it sucks."

"It can't be any worse than Sacred Heart's food," Lan Fan said.

"We're at a _public school_ ," Ed said pityingly. "It's going to be a million times worse. Sorry."

"Wonderful," Lan Fan said sarcastically. "Well, that helps future me, but not 20 minutes from now me. Any suggestions?"

Ed thought about it for a minute or two, trying to remember what Paninya had eaten last year until she'd seen the light and started bringing lunch from home too. "The pizza's got a weird texture and you'll need like a million napkins to soak up the grease, but I think it's okay otherwise. And if there's some kind of salad or chicken thing available, you should be fine. Winry says the yogurt's a national brand, but dairy is disgusting, so I wouldn't trust it. And there's always the vending machines."

"I hate school," Lan Fan said.

"Join the club, we meet every weekday."

***

For the first time since Ed's second day of chemistry, he was looking forward to class. Ed was pretty sure they'd be stuck with stupid worksheets and a couple terrible videos all week, but Lan Fan would probably keep up with him and finish early and she was more interesting than staring at the clock or doodling in his notebook.

Lan Fan apparently took her classwork seriously though, even when it was boring as fuck. She ignored him while Mr. Chandler was telling them about ionic bonds or something; Ed stopped paying attention after they turned their homework in (Ed had completed about four problems before he got bored). She kicked Ed when he tried to pass her a note where he'd drawn an awesome rendition of their class as zombies, dead from how boring Mr. Chandler was.

Whatever, she'd appreciate it later.

Lan Fan made an amused noise when she finally looked at Ed's masterpiece, but continued to ignore him while she took notes. When Ed wasn't looking, a poorly-drawn portrait of Mr. Chandler as a vampire appeared in front of him. She'd added in some impressive blood splatter and Ed figured it was symbolic of their energy and attention span, because what else would an inhuman monster like their teacher be feeding off?

Ed responded with a stick figure superhero comic: Ed and Lan Fan as the heroes (you could tell they were the heroes because of their capes, and Ed thought he'd done a good job with his braid and Lan Fan's bun: you could totally tell the stick figures apart) chasing down the supervillain Chemistro (who had an ugly tie and Mr. Chandler's bad comb over).

Lan Fan actually laughed at that one and wrote a quick note that her hero persona was a badass normal master martial artist. Ed gave her a thumbs up, then scrawled a question about what kind of martial arts. He had an...advanced student? curiosity about her preferences. Ed was partial to capoeira and judo, but he'd started off with karate along with Al and had a deep and abiding love of action movie fight scenes. So many of them were so bad, it was hilarious and the rest of them were just _awesome._

When the class broke for more group work and Mr. Chandler started circulating through the room to answer questions and work more closely with his students, Lan Fan could _finally_ answer Ed's burning question.

"So," he said impatiently. "Favorite martial arts style, you're killing me here with the suspense."

"What makes you think I have one?" she asked. "I might just think Cassandra Cain is awesome and want to be a less-traumatized version of her when I grow up."

"Cass _is_ awesome," Ed agreed. "But it took you like two seconds to come up with hero identity, you've totally thought about it, which means you've thought about fighting styles at least a little bit. Are you thinking hand-to-hand, swords, something with escrima sticks? Come on, share with the class."

"I don't think our classmates are that interested in the topic," Lan Fan said dryly, gesturing with her pen towards the other tables full of diligently working and/or confused students.

"Yeah, 'cause they're still doing the assignment," Ed said. "But this part of the class wants to know."

"I started off with taekwondo classes when I was a kid," Lan Fan said. "One of my teachers had some background with wushu—the sport version, and I've been kinda exploring that and some related styles. So I figure, if I was a superhero or the star of an anime series, I'd be a badass, acrobatic fighter with like, borderline supernatural powers. And a costume that didn't suck."

"What, you think the capes I drew weren't cool?"

Lan Fan rolled her eyes. "Imagine doing any kind of flip or spinning kick with one."

Ed thought about it for a second, then winced. "Yeah, okay, bad call. I'm off-balance enough if I get enough momentum going, adding something long's just begging for me to get caught in it and fall on my ass."

"Wait," she said, leaning in a little. "Do you do karate or something?"

"Capoeira and judo," he said. "My little brother, too. Al competes, I don't."

"Oh my god, that's so cool!" Lan Fan enthused. "Okay so, capoeira. Is it as fun as it looks?"

Ed spent the rest of the class period and part of lunch talking with Lan Fan about martial arts and action movies; it was awesome.

***

"So," Ed said to Lan Fan when she dropped her backpack (black like her jeans and lipstick, of course) onto their table. "I didn't see you at lunch on Monday, you should sit with us today."

"Who's us?"

"Me, Winry, Winry's girlfriend Paninya, my brother Al, who's awesome, you'll like him. Russell might show up today."

Lan Fan had pulled out a now-familiar dark blue binder and her water bottle, she seemed to be settled in for class now. Ed was surprised he'd beaten her to class this time, it'd only been a few days but he was starting to expect her to be there with sarcastic commentary when he showed up.

"Who's Russell?" she asked and Ed debated how to answer it. Russell was complicated.

"So you know how I said I had a boyfriend?"

"Oh! He's the boyfriend?"

Ed shook his head and sighed, mostly from annoyance. "Russell is the asshole, uh, how did Al put this? We want to hatefuck, but we don't actually hate each other. Also, not fucking, 'cause it's a little soon for that. If we were dating, I mean, it'd be a little soon. But we're not dating, because he's an asshole and I want to punch him almost as much as I want to make out with him and the feeling is mostly mutual."

"So he's the boyfriend," Lan Fan repeated.

"In the loosest sense possible," Ed said.

*

Lunch couldn't come quickly enough, but that was Ed's opinion about it any day he had to get up early. Chemistry just made it worse. It was a very long hour and a half until the bell finally freed them and then he had to wait for Lan Fan to put her things away. Then he had to walk with her towards her locker and wait for her to swap books and binders around and grab her lunch. Then they had to do the same at Ed's locker but _finally_ they made it to the cafeteria and Ed's friends' preferred table.

Paninya was sitting sideways, leaning against the wall, with Winry and all of Winry's sketched out blueprints spread out next to her. Al wasn't there yet, but he was coming from halfway across the building and had probably detoured to say hi to Fletcher between bells and carry his books to class. Russell wasn't there, but Russell spent half of his lunches in the greenhouse or the library, so it wasn't like it was that weird to miss him.

Ed took a seat across from Winry and left space for someone on either side of him; Lan Fan took the spot closer to the wall and Ed figured Al or Russell would take the other, whichever got there first. So, probably Al.

"Hi!" Winry said brightly. "You must be Lan Fan, Ed won't shut up about you. I'm Winry, this is Paninya, and I think you'll meet Sheska later, she promised to eat with us today."

"Does that mean we're going to get Russell?" Paninya asked. "Al and I have money riding on what the lovebirds are going to fight about next."

Ed glared at Paninya; she just stole his bag of chips.

"I honestly hate you," he told her, and of course, Winry kicked him in response. Paninya smirked and Ed snatched his chips back with a huff.

"Do I want to know?" Lan Fan asked and Ed stared covetously at the lunch she was unpacking. It was some kind of noodle thing with veggies that smelled amazing.

"You don't," Ed said. "I will trade lunches with you, whatever you have looks awesome. I'll even give you two of my cookies."

"You're offering to trade mom's cookies?" Al said from behind Ed. "And leftover chicken stuff? Are you feeling okay?"

Lan Fan dropped her chopsticks in surprise; "You didn't say you had a twin brother!"

Al laughed and put his lunch bag beside Winry, walking around the table to take his seat.

"They're not twins," Paninya said. "Al's younger and prettier than Ed, he's totally the model to trade up for." Ed threw a balled up wrapper at her, not bothering with a comeback.

"Al's much nicer, too," Winry said. 'I'm sorry you have class with Ed, he really shouldn't be your introduction to us, he's a jerk."

"He's been pretty nice to me so far," Lan Fan said. "Not so nice to our teacher, but that's fair. He's pretty boring."

"I'm really sorry Mr. Chandler is your introduction to the science department," Winry said. "We actually have a couple of cool classes and Mrs. Curtis is pretty much the best teacher ever, I had her for bio last year and she runs the robotics club. You should check it out! We could use some more people."

"They do a robot death match at the end of the year, it's pretty badass," Paninya added in. "I'm going to join Winry's team once they get started on that."

"An actual death match or a race?" Lan Fan asked them.

"It's an obstacle course," Al said. "It changes every year. There's usually only two or three teams, but if we get some more people to join we might have enough to make it a real competition."

"Hmmm," Lan Fan said noncommittally. "I guess that's about as cool as the history club's trebuchets and castle building contest."

"Castle building?" Paninya asked.

"They're made out of cardboard and have to be able to fit through the door. I don't know why it became a yearly thing, but it did. I got talked into helping Ling's little sister with her's last year. It was fun, but the trebuchet contest was way cooler."

"Who's Ling?" Al asked.

"My best friend," Lan Fan said with a blush. "And boyfriend now, I guess."

"I'm pretty sure you either have a boyfriend or you don't," Ed said. He was curious; Lan Fan had mentioned her best friend a few times and her boyfriend but Ed hadn't realized they were they same person.

"Like you're one to talk," Lan Fan teased. "It's pretty new, and I moved like a week after he said he liked me, so. We're figuring it out."

"Oh, long distance," Al said sympathetically. "That sucks."

Lan Fan snorted and shook her head. "He lives like twenty minutes away and never stops texting me. Not exactly long distance, we're going to be _fine_."

"What, did you just change districts?" Paninya asked and, surprisingly, offered Lan Fan some of her apple slices. Paninya rarely shared her food; Ed knew there was a story behind that and didn't know the details. He was pretty sure that if he knew them, he'd want to punch someone. Ed remembered some of the crap his mom had put up with when he and Al were little; Trisha had been a _very young_ single mother with small two boys, neither of whom was totally white passing. They'd needed some help for a few years, until he and Al started school and mom had finished. Paninya and her grandfather must have had an even harder time navigating the system.

"Yeah," Lan Fan said. "We moved across town so my dad's commute wasn't so bad. Sacred Heart isn't so great that it's worth me commuting, not when the local public school's pretty good."

"It's a shitty time to move though," Ed said.

"Better than in the middle of my senior year," Lan Fan said. "My college stuff might have gotten lost in the mail then."

"Rule number one of this table," Paninya said. "No college talk for at least another couple of months, it's boring. You know what's not boring? Robots and medieval weaponry. You think we can convince Mrs. Curtis to let us design seige robots?"

"What's this us you're speaking of?" Al demanded. "You never design them, you just hang out and distract Winry—" Al got an evil gleam in his eye and Ed knew _exactly_ what he was going to say.

"Dibs on Paninya for my team!" Ed called out first. "Your job would be to distract Winry and celebrate our victory."

"Awesome," Paninya said with a grin. "I can do that. And then I can comfort Winry afterwards."

"I'm going to assume you mean taking her out for ice cream," Al said. "And don't tell me what else you might do with ice cream!"

Paninya just laughed and Winry patted Al comfortingly on the arm. "Well, when two girls love each other and ice cream very much—"

Lan Fan interrupted before Winry could scar Al (and Ed) any more. "What would my job be?"

Ed eyed her speculatively. So far, he had no indication that she was any good at building stuff or had any experience with programming. On the other hand, she had awesome taste and he'd just recruited _Paninya_ to his robotics team.

"Help me make our robot look awesome. I'm thinking bat wings."

"Might interfere with mobility," Lan Fan pointed out. "Unless we painted them on or something? It'll need a badass name, maybe something like Zombie Daydream."

"My god Ed, did you manage to find your long lost sister?"

Ed raised an eyebrow, holy fuck, Russell actually came to lunch. Sheska was next to him; she must have found him in the library.

"Russell, this is Lan Fan, she's cooler than you'll ever be."

"Considering your definition of "cool", I'm not too concerned," Russell shot back. He shook his bangs out of his eyes (Ed was tempted to cut them the next opportunity he had, but he was also tempted to brush them out of the way) and smiled warmly at Lan Fan.

"Sorry," Russell said. "I just have an automatic reaction to Ed. I'm sure you're as wonderful a person as you look."

"Fucking charming asshole," Ed grumbled, but he waved Russell over to the open seat next to him.

"At least I have charms, you're just an asshole, Ed."

"Guys," Sheska interrupted. "Let's just have a nice lunch, okay?"

"If they spend the whole time insulting each other, Al owes me five bucks and I'll split it with you if you let them do their thing." Paninaya said. "Or I'll buy a giant cookie and split _that_ with you."

"Tempting," Sheska said; she'd packed a salad for lunch and Ed was willing to bet she'd forgotten to bring something unhealthy and delicious again.

"You know I like to spite Paninya almost as much as I like to insult Russell," Ed said. "So, shit, if I spite her, I can't make fun of Russell, there's no way I win here, is there?"

'Well," Lan Fan said slowly. "You said you like making out with him as much as you like making fun of him, so if you spend the rest of lunch making out, you get to spite Paninya and have fun, which should be a net win."

"I like how you think," Ed said and looked at Russell with a raised brow, silently asking for input. Russell smirked and tilted Ed's face up for kiss. Ed only intended for it to be a short, chaste kiss but Russell was a pretty awesome kisser and he slid his hand back into Ed's hair enough to tug lightly on it; Ed lost himself for a moment and let Russell deepen the kiss.

"My _eyes_ ," Al moaned, and Winry made an unhappy noise. Something soft hit Ed's shoulder, one of them had thrown something at him. Ed flipped them off.

"Oh, nice," Sheska said and Lan Fan hummed in agreement.

"I think," Lan Fan said smugly. "I'm the one who won here. They're very pretty together."

Russell laughed into Ed's shoulder and sat down next to him; Ed spent the rest of lunch holding Russell's hand under the table and making fun of Winry and Al, with some help from Lan Fan and Sheska.

***

"So," Lan Fan said in the middle class the next day. "What are you doing this weekend?"

"I've got to finish reading a book for English," Ed said. "And there are a couple journal articles I have bookmarked and I think Al wants to do something with bottle rockets and food coloring, but I'm pretty much free at least one of the days, why?"

"Ling wants to meet you and I want to hang out with Sheska more, she's also in my French class and seems cool. So I was thinking a movie night? Or afternoon, whichever works better for people."

"Do you have any objections to hanging out with everyone from lunch yesterday or gaming?" Ed asked her. Lan Fan shrugged and pulled her homework out to pass to the front of the room. Belatedly, Ed rummaged around for his, he'd done the reading at least and had probably answered at least one of the review questions.

"I play a couple RPGs and Ling likes to watch me play, sometimes he plays on easy levels."

"He'll fit right in then," Ed said with a grin. "Paninya and Sheska don't really play, but Winry's kind of competitive against me and Russell, so there's usually something else going on if you guys want to come over. We don't have like, a regular game night or anything, but we try to get everyone together every couple of weeks for a big movie marathon or something."

"Sounds awesome," Lan Fan said sincerely. "Should we bring anything?"

"Any awesome movies or games you own," Ed said. "I don't know if we'll make food or order pizza, I'll text you once Al and I figure that out."

"Yay food!" Lan Fan said.

"If you're quite finished, Mr. Elric, Ms. Yiu, this _is_ a classroom," Mr. Chandler said irritably.

"And this class is a waste of my time," Ed muttered quietly which made Lan Fan giggle.

"Sorry Mr. Chandler!" she said sweetly. "We'll be quieter."

Mr. Chandler looked mollified and Ed grinned; he liked how she hadn't said they'd _stop_ talking.

***

Mom had been pretty easy to talk into letting everyone come over after school. She liked Ed and Al's friends, he was pretty sure she'd like Lan Fan (and, presumably, Lan Fan's boyfriend) too. The usual rules applied: anyone not spending the night needed to be able to safely get home by their curfew, Ed and Al were responsible for dinner and cleanup, Trisha was allowed to exile them to their half-finished basement if they were doing something loud or woke her up.

Ed's mom was pretty much the _coolest_.

"We should do tacos," Al said at breakfast. "Fast and easy to customize. And we can just buy some store brand chips and salsa for snacks."

"I like that idea," Mom said. "Because it'll be pretty easy for you to clean up too."

"We only forgot to clean up _once_ ," Al complained. "And you never let it go."

"I woke up to a disaster zone in my kitchen, you didn't even soak the pots!" Mom said and Ed thought she probably had a good point there. Also: that was totally Al's fault, he'd sworn he'd handle clean up and then got distracted by Fletcher.

"Whatever," Ed said around a mouthful of toast. He wasn't a picky eater as long as there was no dairy. "I'm gonna hold you to tacos, none of that quesadilla crap Paninya and Fletcher pulled last time."

"No one's going to make you eat the mean, nasty cheese," Al said with an eyeroll. "It just means there's more for the rest of us. And we can make nachos!"

"Gross," Ed said and stuck his tongue out at Al.

"Please chew and swallow your food, Edward," Mom said with a sigh. "I know I raised you better than that."

*

English was actually kind of interesting that morning, they weren't talking about The Scarlet Letter for a change. Well, they kind of were. It was more a free-form conversation about reputations, Easy A, identity politics and movie adaptations. Ed wished he had more classes like that, way more interesting than talking about Classic American Literature (yawn, though Sheska had him vaguely looking forward to their satire unit later in the semester).

Ed was still thinking about movie adaptations when he walked into his next class and caught Lan Fan's eye.

"Hey," she said with a small wave.

"Hey," Ed said, dumping his bag on the table. "What's your favorite movie version of Batman?"

"Tim Burton's," Lan Fan said fairly quickly. "I like aspects of Nolan's version and Ben Affleck's Bruce Wayne, but they all kind of suck if you like the good comic versions, you know? What brought that up?"

"We were talking about movie adaptations and retellings of stuff in English, it was kind of cool. Got me thinking about all the superhero movies and you seem like a person with opinions on the subject."

Lan Fan grinned at him. "Ed, I have opinions on like, most genres of geeky stuff. I thought you knew that already."

"Sure," he replied. "But I don't know what they _are_ yet."

"Oh!" she exclaimed softly. "I just had a good idea, there's a game I have to introduce you to, it's got a really cool fairy tale adaptation thing going on and it's way more fun as a multiplayer."

"Cool," Ed said and the final bell rang; time for his daily torture session. At least with his calculus class, he could nap through part of it or work ahead. "Hey so, Al and I have to do a grocery run after school, but there should be some kind of food after 5 if you and Ling want to show up then."

"Ohhh, what kind of food?"

"Tacos, and I think Fletcher might talk Russell into bringing something."

Lan Fan beamed; clearly tacos were a good choice. He knew she had good taste from the moment he spotted her boots.

*

Winry showed up before anyone else and helped them with dinner. Ed was happy to hand over the cheese grating duties and took over slicing tomatoes. Paninya and Sheska showed up a little after five with a giant bag of M&Ms and Sheska's laptop. Unfortunately, Sheska had pretty much the worst taste in music so they were stuck listening to a hellish mix of Taylor Swift, mid-00s pop punk and the Utena soundtracks.

Ed had nothing against Utena, for a 90s anime it had some pretty badass music, and Ed was comfortable enough with his gothness to admit he actually _liked_ My Chemical Romance, but it was a bad combo. Winry and Al's insistence on singing along with Bad Blood didn't help. Ed was really fucking glad when the doorbell rang—anything to get away from the kitchen karaoke.

Russell and Fletcher were standing on the porch with backpack that hopefully contained one of their laptops.

"Oh thank god, you're here," Ed said. "Fletcher, I need you to kill Sheska's Itunes. Like, kill it yesterday. Please."

"Is Al singing along?" Fletcher asked and when Ed nodded, Fletcher made a face. "I'm on it, also, please don't spend an hour making out with my brother on the porch again."

"You just wish you were making out with my brother on the porch," Ed shot back and was rewarded by Fletcher blushing and Russell making a stupid, grossed out face. Though, Al making out with anyone, ugh. "Forget I said that, Al's only allowed to hold hands with people."

"You'll have to hang out with us if you want to enforce that rule," Fletcher said.

Ed narrowed his eyes. "Is that a challenge?"

Fletcher smirked, "Maybe. Pretty sure Al still has the director's cut of the new Star Trek , maybe we'll watch it later."

"Pretty sure that plan'll backfire," Russell drawled. "Since there's no new Star Trek and we're on to you, we just won't leave."

"We do have pretty comfy living room furniture," Ed said with an evil grin. "We could just make out there," and he laughed when Fletcher ran off.

"Didn't realize you had such an exhibitionest streak, Ed," Russell said, crowding into Ed's space. Ed let him, because this might be the only chance he had all night to get a few minutes with Russell before he did something that pissed Ed off. Ed didn't reply, he just pulled Russell in and started kissing him.

"I didn't know we were getting dinner and a show," Lan Fan called out from the sidewalk.

"You take me to the _best_ places, you're too good to me," an unfamiliar voice replied and Ed figured that must be Lan Fan's mysterious boyfriend. Ed flipped them both off on principle and Lan Fan laughed. Ed kissed Russell once more before breaking away enough to say hi.

Ling Yao was nothing like Ed expected; he was quite a bit taller than Ed and Lan Fan were and had on the brightest yellow hoodie Ed had ever seen. Not that Ed had seen too many of them, Winry and Sheska both did bright colors but Ed knew for a fact Winry didn't own anything yellow. Ed very much did not approve.

"Is he color blind?" Ed asked Lan Fan and she sighed dramatically.

"No, he just can't dress himself."

"While I admire your commitment to the dark side," Ling said cheerfully. "It doesn't suit all of us. I would look terrible in your skeleton t-shirts and you know it. Now your pants," he said while obviously checking out both Lan Fan and Ed, "those I would look fantastic in."

"Really," Russell said flatly, and very obviously wrapping an arm around Ed's waist. "I don't think so."

Ed shoved him because really? Now Russell decided to get possessive and act like they were dating? If he wasn't friends with Lan Fan (and if she wasn't fully capable of beating the crap out of Ed), he'd consider flirting back a little just to make a point; Russell was a jerk and Ling was pretty hot. Lan Fan had good taste, even if Ling clearly shouldn't be allowed in a store without supervision.

"No one cares what you think, Tringham," Ed said. "C'mon, Fletcher's probably had time to take over as dj."

"Sounds like a party," Ling said and Lan Fan rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, my kind of party," she told him. "With video games and stupid action movies."

Ling beamed and yeah, okay, Ed could see why she liked him.

"Awesome," Ling said. "That's the best kind, all of the fun, none of the hangovers."

"...mostly none of the hangovers," Russell said. "None of them here at least, Ed's mom is home. Movie night at my house can get a little more interesting."

"We'll have to compare them," Ling said, clearly confident that they'd be invited again. Lan Fan definitely would be, Ed liked her too much, even if he wasn't too sure about Ling yet.

"Ed, stop making out with Russell and help me find the extra controllers!" Al yelled from inside the house.

Ed sighed, "Duty calls and shit. If you can find a place for your jackets by the door, awesome, if you can't, there's a spot in the living room. I have no idea if the food's done yet, but you're welcome to whatever we've put out so far."

Ed led the way and the other three followed. The kitchen wasn't actually that crowded, it looked like Fletcher and his mom were just finishing up putting their tacos together. Russell was actually a decent human being for once and offered to put a plate together for Ed while he hunted around for the spare controllers. Ed and Al actually had a couple of them, but there was something weird with one and Al was convinced another one was totally broken, but Ed could never figure out which one it was, so they just pulled them all out and hoped for the best.

Sheska, Paninya and Winry had already taken over the couch, they were looking at something on Sheska's laptop when Ed finally found the last controller behind a side table. He took a seat with Russell and Al on the floor and enjoyed the first bite of a well-earned taco and the chaos surrounding him. Lan Fan and Ling were sitting on an armchair, whispering intently. Ling seemed to be trying to talk her into something and after a few minutes (and after Sheska passed her laptop around to show everyone an awesome video she found on tumblr), Lan Fan cleared her throat.

"Um," she said softly and no one really noticed.

"Hey, shut the fuck up for a minute, Lan Fan's talking," Ed called out loudly.

"Thanks," she said only a little sarcastically as the room quieted down. "So. Okay. Ed said game night, right? So I brought over one of my favorite games that I think you guys will like, but Ling thinks you need context for it, so we want to show you a couple of really quick videos if that's cool?"

Al navigated to youtube on Lan Fan's instructions and pulled up something called "[rwby red trailer](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYW2GmHB5xs)" and what followed was three and a half minutes of _awesome_.

"Dude," Fletcher said reverently. "What _is_ this?"

"The first trailer for a web series," Ling said smugly. "There are four total, they're all awesome. And they made a game based off all this."

"Nice," Winry said appreciatively. "What's the next trailer?"

"[White](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt9vl8iAN5Q)," Lan Fan said, "then [Black](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImKCt7BD4U4) and [Yellow](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCw_aAS7vWI). And _then_ we can watch the first episode or start playing, it's a multi-player hack-and-slash game and it's not too hard to pick up."

"Badass," Ed said with a grin. "Let's get started."


End file.
